Mr. Tim Cullinan:

In every crisis, we have to see where there are benefits. There is a risk with the potato sector. An issue was highlighted last week by one of our members, Thomas McKeown, concerning a scarcity of larger potatoes for chip production. We will be looking at this with our members to see if farmers would be interested in developing a sector growing larger potatoes for that market. On seed potatoes, that will always take time because there are rights around the seeds and so forth.

The Government needs to step up to the plate as well. Everybody has been highlighting the costs and concerns around Brexit. We must also look at the gains.

We have a specialised group of people growing vegetables in Ireland. What happens every year coming up to Christmas is that the retailers put vegetables on promotion. In some years, I have seen vegetables left in the fields and they were imported into the country. We have a group of people growing vegetables. The first call by any retailer should be for Irish produce. The public's first call too should be to buy Irish, particularly coming up to Christmas. That is an area on which we can focus. Farmers are growing vegetables. We must ensure they are better supported with some Government support around that too.

As I said already, every year 500,000 lambs come from Northern Ireland to the Republic for slaughter. It is important that we continue cross-border trade. It also works both ways and we can look at new markets. Since the start of Covid, the food service sector closed down and consumers are eating more at home. Lamb was always a product which did not sell in the food service sector. We have seen a significant demand for lamb for home cooking. It has also been promoted. There will be an opportunity with lamb but it is about trying to find new markets.

For some while, I have been raising with Bord Bia as to why it, as a State body, has not been looking for alternative markets, particularly for beef, over the past four years. The message going from this committee should be about why Bord Bia was not looking for alternative markets. There is no point in looking for them this evening when we are at a crisis point.